Tag Archives: author blog

“I’ve been talking my ass off for more than an hour now, telling you shit no one’s ever heard anything about, hoping that I’ll say something, Jesus God, anything that will convince you to have sex with me.”

2

“If you want, I can carry you—”
“I’m fine,” she said shortly. “Let’s go.”
He’d said that wrong. He should have said, “I want to carry you.”

3

“You love me,” he said. “That’s all I need to know.”
“You always say the right thing,” Savannah told him, her eyes so filled with love that he almost wept. “Sometimes it takes you awhile to get to it, but you always get there, and what you say is always worth waiting for.”

4

““I’m going to carry you now,” he told her, “so we can move even faster. I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. Any response from you is unnecessary and unwelcome.”

5

“This wasn’t Weirdville, this was fricking Wonderland. Alice here was all grow up, but she was still chowing down on too much of that psychedelic mushroom.”

—
Ava Delany
The Fetish Club Series, The Homecoming Series, and The Beginnings Series.
Look for my newest release- A Surprising Day – on Kindle, Allromanceebooks, and many other places where ebooks are sold.

“Like the legless man, I’m unaccountably fascinated by those who can dance.”

2

“Every word you have ever uttered, is engraved upon my heart.”

3

“If he presses, tell him it’s a female matter. That stop any question.”

4

“You’ve used me to punish yourself, haven’t you?”
He watched dawning realization spread over her face, a confirmation more positive than anything she could ever say, and that arrow twisted deep in his
chest. Yet still he had to ask the last question.
“Am I anything to you but a punishment?”

5

“I’d walk through fire for you,” he rasped, his voice hoarse and broken. “I have walked through fire for you.”

—
Ava Delany
The Fetish Club Series, The Homecoming Series, and The Beginnings Series.
Look for my newest release- A Surprising Day – on Kindle, Allromanceebooks, and many other places where ebooks are sold.

Reena’s hands twisted at her skirt, and she bit her lip, willing
him without a sound to face her. Suddenly, he turned in her
direction and their eyes met. A vibrant shock ran through her
body. She stared at him entranced for a moment. If his hair was
the sandy beach, his blue-grey eyes, the lake on which mysterious
clouds had formed.

2

“What? You know as well as I that the twins are merely courting
me because of their rivalry. I still remember the day in that
alleyway. They fought each other so that each ended with the
other’s head in his arm. It was rather ridiculous.” She grinned at
the memory, in spite of herself. “Anyhow, they are competing for
me. Remember when Uncle Howard had to turn them away when
they started to bring me flowers? It started with a single red rose
from Michael.”
Emily grinned as she grabbed the dress from the bed. “Your
uncle was quite put out with a house full of flowers and poor
Martin on the doorstep with four dozen roses.”

3

“You came to me and said:
‘Excuse me, but could I trick you into sailing to America where
you know no one and then leave you in a gutter with nowhere to
go’?”
She laughed.
“You’ve discovered my plan.” Reena put a hand to her chin
as if in contemplation “Well, I’ll just have to come up with a new
one.” She

4

“Reena closed the book and held it for a moment. She wanted
to get another peek at him. She loved to study Joshua, and when
he didn’t know she was watching, she could really take her time.
Her foot began to tap, and then her leg began to shake. Before Reena
even realized she’d made the decision to move, her book was
on the table, and she stood at the window of her uncle’s study.

5

“No tears now, my love. This is a moment for happiness, love,
and passion.”

—
Ava Delany
The Fetish Club Series, The Homecoming Series, and The Beginnings Series.
Look for my newest release- A Surprising Day – on Kindle, Allromanceebooks, and many other places where ebooks are sold.

“For the record,” she continued, “it’s not my fault I came in here looking like Chesty LaRue. You caught me on laundry day, so I have no undergarments on. Though I will cop to a little extra spring in my step for your benefit.”

2

She murmured, “You’re unfinished.”
“Aye, precisely.”
“I need to go.”
When she moved to get up, he shoved her against his side and slapped her arse to keep her there. “You stay with me.”
She snapped, “What do you want from me, Chase?”
He drew his head back in confusion. “I want everything. You’re mine, Regin.”

3

“Your ultimatum didn’t sit well with me, so naturally, I voiced my opinion.”
“Which was?”
“That you should go copulate with a pig. It sounded way cooler in medieval French.”

4

“One day I’m going to make that little piggy cry all the way home.”

5

“I can draw you a diagram. Hint: I’m slot B, and you’re tab A.”

—
Ava Delany
The Fetish Club Series, The Homecoming Series, and The Beginnings Series.
Look for my newest release- A Surprising Day – on Kindle, Allromanceebooks, and many other places where ebooks are sold.

“There isn’t any poison oak in the winter. It’s hard to convince a girl you’re sexy when you can’t stop scratching your ass because of the rash.”

2

“Smile…it makes people wonder what you’re up to.”

3

“She’s drunk dialing contractors. Someone should stop her.”

4

“Sorry,” he said. “Let me drop the belt-”
“No.” She held on when he would have pulled away. “Don’t. I like it.”
Again, he lifted her face, and he smiled. “The tool belt turns you on.”
“No.” She closed her eyes and thunked her forehead to his chest. “Little bit.”

5

“I’m already yours. Always have been. All you have to do is step into the ring.”

—
Ava Delany
The Fetish Club Series, The Homecoming Series, and The Beginnings Series.
Look for my newest release- A Surprising Day – on Kindle, Allromanceebooks, and many other places where ebooks are sold.

He couldn’t just come right out with it, could he? No, that would scare her off. He had to be subtle, build up to it. Explain himself.
“I love you.”
Of course, straight to the point was also an effective strategy.

2

“Excuse me, your attention please.”
He waited until the whole floor had stopped what it was doing and turned to face him. For a split second his impulse control kicked in, but by then his mouth was fully engaged.
“For the record, Claire Marsden and I are not having sex.”

3

“She didn’t sound overjoyed. She didn’t sound even slightly joyed.”

4

“Just leave me alone, I want to be alone,” she said when Jack tried to open the car door. She hit the lock, and wound the window up. Since the roof was down, it was a fairly pointless exercise.

5

Then Jack turned to her.
Safari? That was the best excuse you could come up with for me not being at a meeting?”
She winced apologetically. “I’m sorry. I’m a terrible liar.”
What was wrong with simple sickness? A nice, normal bout of food poisoning?”
He was in a bad mood. I kind of got carried away,” she admitted.
Boy, are you lucky I watched Tarzan so much as a kid.”

—
Ava Delany
The Fetish Club Series, The Homecoming Series, and The Beginnings Series.
Look for my newest release- A Surprising Day – on Kindle, Allromanceebooks, and many other places where ebooks are sold.

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that when one part of your life starts going okay, another falls spectacularly to pieces.”

2

“I will not fall for any of the following: alcoholics, workaholics, commitment phobics, people with girlfriends or wives, misogynists, megalomanics, chauvists, emotional f@ckwits or freeloaders, perverts.”

3

“Being a woman is worse than being a farmer. There is so much harvesting and crop spraying to be done: legs to be waxed, underarms shaved, eyebrows plucked, feet pumiced, skin exfoliated and moisturized, spots cleansed, roots dyed, eyelashes tinted, nails filed, cellulite massaged, stomach muscles exercised. The whole performance is so highly tuned you only need to neglect it for a few days for the whole thing to go to seed. Sometimes I wonder what I would be like if left to revert to nature — with a full beard and handlebar moustache on each shin, Dennis Healey eyebrows, face a graveyard of dead skin cells, spots erupting, long curly fingernails like Struwelpeter, blind as bat and stupid runt of species as no contact lenses, flabby body flobbering around. Ugh ugh. Is it any wonder girls have no confidence”

4

“Can officially confirm that the way to a man’s heart these days is not through beauty, food, sex, or alluringness of character, but merely the ability to seem not very interested in him.”

5

“Come on, let’s get you a drink. How’s your love life, anyway?”

Oh God. Why can’t married people understand that this is no longer a polite question to ask? We wouldn’t rush up to them and roar, “How’s your marriage going? Still have sex?”

—
Ava Delany
The Fetish Club Series, The Homecoming Series, and The Beginnings Series.
Look for my newest release- A Surprising Day – on Kindle, Allromanceebooks, and many other places where ebooks are sold.

And when her lips met mine, I knew that I could live to be a hundred and visit every country in the world, but nothing would ever compare to that single moment when I first kissed the girl of my dreams and knew that my love would last forever.

2

“Passion is passion. It’s the excitement between the tedious spaces, and it doesn’t matter where it’s directed…It can be coins or sports or politics or horses or music or faith…the saddest people I’ve ever met in life are the ones who don’t care deeply about anything at all.”

3

“It’s possible to go on, no matter how impossible it seems.”

4

“”It’ll be hard, but life moves fast-we’ll see each other again. I know that. I can feel that. Just like I can feel how much you care for me and how much I love you”

5

“They inspire you, they entertain you, and you end up learning a ton even when you don’t know it”

—
Ava Delany
The Fetish Club Series, The Homecoming Series, and The Beginnings Series.
Look for my newest release- A Surprising Day – on Kindle, Allromanceebooks, and many other places where ebooks are sold.

“Very few people mate for life with the people they fall for at twelve. Doesn’t mean is isn’t real, doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt, doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter, but basically, we’re talking a practice swing in the big game of love.”

3

Mason was leaving her for a fifty-four-year-old woman who didn’t moisturize

4

“Everybody’s crooked. The trick is to find out how they’re bent.”

5

“Dempseys are never in trouble. We just have stretches of life that are more interesting than others.”

—
Ava Delany
The Fetish Club Series, The Homecoming Series, and The Beginnings Series.
Look for my newest release- A Surprising Day – on Kindle, Allromanceebooks, and many other places where ebooks are sold.

Today’s 5 Great Lines come from Married By Morning, by Lisa Kleypas. Enjoy.1

“You are not a perfect woman.You have an evil temper, you’re as blind as a mole, you’re a deplorable poet, and frankly, your French accent could use some work.” Supporting himself on his elbows, Leo took her face in his hands. “But when I put those things together with the rest of you, it makes you into the most perfectly imperfect woman I’ve ever known.”

2

“I have a very pure soul. It’s only my private parts that have gotten me into trouble.”

3

“Fencing isn’t really fighting. It’s more like chess with the risk of puncture wounds”

4

“You seem to think you have a choice,” Cam said “But you have it backwards. Love chooses you. The shadow moves as the sun commands.”-

5

“I’ve told you before, I love like a madman,” he said. “Immoderate, jealous, possessive…I’m absolutely intolerable.”

—
Ava Delany
The Fetish Club Series, The Homecoming Series, and The Beginnings Series.
Look for my newest release- A Surprising Day – on Kindle, Allromanceebooks, and many other places where ebooks are sold.

“You’ve won the evolutionary lottery: You’re a vampire. Let’s go to Disneyland!”

2

The half-human was the hottest thing he’d ever gotten anywhere near. And he’d cozied up to a lightning strike once or twice before.

3

“Perfect date material, she thought. A vampire with the social equivalent of road rage.”

4

“Tell me something,boys. Do you wear that leather to turn each other on? I mean, is it a dick thing with you all?”

5

Wrath dragged Beth into his arms and hugged her hard, talking in that other language again. When he pulled back, he ended the monologue with something like leelan.
Beth: “Is that vampire talk for bitch?”

—
Ava Delany
The Fetish Club Series, The Homecoming Series, and The Beginnings Series.
Look for my newest release- A Surprising Day – on Kindle, Allromanceebooks, and many other places where ebooks are sold.

I’ve been noticing that my time is at a premium lately. I have two children, a toddler and a newborn (well, three if you count the nearly six foot one I call hubby 🙂 ). Well, as a writer, I love to write. It’s part of my soul. When I don’t write, I feel grumpy and incomplete. (I’m sure fellow writers will understand this.) Because I need to write, and I was forced–by my high risk ob–to take 6 mos off, I feel the need to write more acutely right now.

Stephen King in On Writing–a book I highly recommend–said that to be successful, you have to think of writing as a business. You should have your business hours and keep them. So it behooves me to find time to write. At least two or three hours if I want to keep my goals.
Now, some things I cannot ignore for writing. There’s meals, potty training, diaper changes, and the funner play and snuggle times. Then there is evening hubby time. Each of these I can’t or wouldn’t want to give up. Which leaves the few things I can give up, in moderation of course.

Where does that leave time to write? Well, there’s sleep time. I’ve carved out two hours at night when I write instead of sleep, but I can’t miss more than that and still function. That leaves another hour I need to find at least. During nap time, I could nap, do housework, or write. Therein lies my own personal Sophie’s Choice. I don’t usually need a nap, so that is easy to give up, but oh housework in the quiet time without someone making a mess as fast as I can clean it? That’s not so easy to give up. Yesterday I chose writing. Today cleaning. I guess my Sophie’s Choice will be a daily struggle. What do you do to find time to write? What do you give up? What is your Sophie’s Choice?

I know I’ve been away much too long. I won’t be out of the loop from now on, but as they say, ‘life happens.’ I’ll do my best to give you a brief snapshot of where I’ve been during my time away from the blog. I’m only really starting to recover from all the excitement. Great thing is, there’s much more ahead.
Last month passed in a blurr. I was getting ready for my first-ever RWA National conference, (which was absolutely amazing). I caught up with members from The Greater Detroit chapter – my local chapter. I met some wonderful people, my fellow GIAMers, some fellow conference newbees, and Harlequin Romance Senior Editor, Kimberly Young in my hotel elevator. Ms. Young wasn’t wearing her nametag, but I recognized her voice from the podcasts on the Eharlequin website. By the way, those podcasts are chalked full of great stuff! If you’re a writer, and targeting Harlequin, definitely check them out.
While at conference, I spent time with chaptermate Renee Alexis and my roommate and pal, Jodi Redford I wish I had photos of the three of us at Animal Kingdom. If you haven’t yet been to Disney, IMO, you need to experience its allure and fantasy-like ambience firsthand. It really is a magical place. You don’t have to be a kid to have a good time. I’m sorry though, that I wasn’t able to check out the Magical Kingdom and meet some of Disney’s finest.
As for the conference,RWA did a fabulous job coordinating all the workshops. The presenters of the many workshops I attended during the course of the conference provided me with a plethora of new material to add to my creative and business arsenals. I’ll mention two here, because it’s over two weeks later, and I still remember them. *g* Margie Lawson and the Carina Press spotlight with Angela James who did an excellent job giving the audience a clear picture of Carina and its mission. As a side note: I’ve just finished up Angela’s editing course with Savvy Authors If you haven’t yet taken it, you need to hurry up and get your spot for her next available class! She presents her lessons with no fuss, no frills added but with plenty examples to get her point across. And I loved that! Go ahead. I’ll wait. *g* Back to conference recap.
The Wednesday night literacy book signing, alone, was very interesting. I sat with Jodi Redford who was signing. To our left was Deanna Raybourn who is so down-to-earth and so nice to chat with. I had fun making small talk with her when she wasn’t busy with her readers.
Keynote speaker, Nora Roberts and Awards Lunch-in speaker, Jayne Ann Krentz are wonderful presenters who impressed me with their incredible amount of knowledge and sound advice, while making me laugh along the way.
The Golden Heart and Rita ceremony left me on the edge of my seat. I can’t imagine how anxious the nominees must’ve been. It was an emotional evening at times for me. I found myself tearing up when one of the winners, (any winner) would become emotional. I especially loved when Julia Quinn was inducted to the Romance Writers of America’s Hall of Fame after winning her third Rita in the category of best Regency Historical Romance with What Happens In London. And my fellow blogger, G. Jillian Stone not only won a Golden Heart, she also snagged an agent. 🙂 Go Jillian!
Since I’ joined RWA in 2006, I learned quickly that the Rita and GH ceremony along with the literacy book signing are infamous with members. Each year, up until now, I’d read others accounts of the conference and events there, and I’d wonder what it would be like to attend and experience them for myself. They were both pretty awesome! After attending this conference, I’ve gained an even greater appreciation for the romance genre, and writing in general. I’ve sharpened my own focus, expanding my dreams while narrowing my goals to the more practical few that I can control.
After returning home from Orlando, , I dove right into my family reunion, the MacInnis family reunion. My relatives from all over Canada flew in for the four-day event. I met second and third cousins, and wives/husbands/children of those cousins it made my head spin. But I had a lot of fun doing it. I heard the Harlequin party was a blast, but trust me, no one can party like my family. *g*
Next up for me, in September, is the year-long mentorship class with Lori Wilde I’m extatic for this course to start. This course looks like it’ll be a blast.
Well, there’s my not-to-concise recap. I hope those of you who attended conference had a fun time just as I did.

One of the fastest and least expensive ways to launch your brand is through social networking. And what might be the best way to do that? Website? Blog? Facebook? Twitter? Can a writer do all that promotion and still have time to write? Time management is a huge concern and rightly so. Every writer has mixed feelings about how much time marketing and promotion takes away from their writing.

Might I suggest you start with baby steps? And only commit to what you can reasonably manage and feel comfortable doing.

Twitter is like a teeny-tiny blog. You get 140 characters (not words) to message your Twitter followers. Great way to announce news and drive traffic to a guest blog or website contest. I was recently told about a writer who only Twitters. That’s it. She finds it easy to bang out a few brief messages every day and stay on schedule. She is contracted to write three books by year’s end. Who wouldn’t choose Twitter?

Published or unpublished, you must consider your website launch a priority. An author website communicates to everyone in the publishing world that you are serious about the business of author/book promotion. If this is your first website, and you are not confident about creating one on your own, there are web development firms that specialize in web design and implementation for small businesses. Many of these companies have hundreds of attractive templates to choose/customize from. And do call in all your favors! Like, do not be afraid to ask for help from a tech-savvy friend or graphic designer relative.

Once your author website is up and running smoothly, you can add a blog. A weekly blog is less of a commitment, but a daily journal/blog is brief and can also be stress free. And if you find you have nothing to blog about, you can always plug in a vacation picture, video of your cat, or a new recipe! Don’t want to blog alone? A blog site concept created with a crit partner or critique group might be exactly right for you. Plus, whatever you blog can be linked to your website.

If the idea of a website or blog commitment is just too daunting, why not ease into your author brand promotion with a Facebook page? It’s a terrific way to network with other writers and romance readers. You can add fan pages and blog links later on. You can also use the tabs in Facebook to post reviews, add book cover art or trailers, and make announcements about signings and workshops.

Website? Blog? Facebook? Twitter? I would pick one or two and then add more, only if you feel like you can handle more. COMING NEXT WEEK: Advanced work in advertising promotion and the importance of testing.

G. Jillian Stone

There are fields in time that burn with desire. Meet me there.

Jillian is a 2010 Golden Heart finalist for THE YARD MAN, the first story in The Yard Men Series. Set in late Victorian London, Scotland Yard detectives have never been as wickedly sexy or as brilliantly clever. To read more about her latest work in progress, THE SEDUCTION OF PHAETON BLACK, please drop by her website: www.gjillianstone.comjillstone@mac.com

I’ve got all these words in my head that are just screaming to get out. Some are descriptive, emotional, sensual, horrifying, loving. I know you understand what I mean. For us, my dear writer, they are the heart and soul of our work.

There are the types of words we scrutinize: adjectives and adverbs. We search them out and agonize over having too many or too few. We edit, re-write and edit some more. We don’t stop there. We hunt out clichés and overused phrases ripping them out of the pages. And all the while we struggle for originality and that magic that hooks the reader and draws them into our stories. We work until our manuscripts shine with a high polish.

The readers are the witness, the hero or heroine, or whomever they prefer to identify with. It’s the juxtaposition of our words that create the pacing, paints the pictures, strikes the chord, arouses emotions and, for us romance writers, brings the story to a happy ending.

Some words we are eager to hear: the call, published, multi-published, reprint, best seller, finalist, award winning. But I’m getting ahead of myself. More often the words are strung a bit differently: I think the concept of your novel has a lot of potential …, Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read your manuscript …, Thank you very much for your manuscript which I have read with interest …, I think you have a wonderful voice … The ellipse is followed by the same word but. Different words but all with the same meaning, rejected, although I really prefer passed. It is just so much more humane.

I have worked hard on my manuscript. I am well passed my first draft. I have self reviewed and edited, my critique partner has reviewed and commented, at chapter meetings I have brought my five to ten pages for discussion. The version number on my document is in double digits. I know I have the words just right. I just need an editor/agent to love them as much as I do.

Sure I can. I can love them anyway you want them!

Special thanks to David Coverly for permission to reprint his cartoon.

Dave Coverly admits there is no overriding theme, no tidy little philosophy that precisely describes what Speed Bump, his syndicated comic, is about. “Basically,” he says, “if life were a movie, these would be the outtakes.”

In addition to his syndicated work, Coverly’s cartoons have been published in The New Yorker, and his cartoons are now regularly featured in Parade Magazine, the most widely read magazine in the world with a circulation of 73 million.

Coverly works out of an attic studio in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He is married to Chris, and they have two daughters, Alayna and Simone.